What Is Tallow Soap? Why We Make Soap With Tallow

We don't just buy tallow — we know where it comes from, who raised the cattle, and we render the raw fat ourselves.

Tallow soap is soap made using tallow, rendered beef fat, as part of its formulation.

At Hog & Tallow, tallow isn't just an ingredient we buy off the shelf. We have built relationships with farmers here in Cornwall, collect raw fat from Cornish farms, and render it ourselves before using it to make our soap.

For us, that's an important part of what makes our soap different.

It means we know where our tallow comes from, we know the farmers we're working with, and we have control over the rendering process before the tallow ever becomes part of a bar of soap.

What is tallow?

Tallow is a rendered form of animal fat, traditionally made from beef fat.

Rendering involves carefully heating the raw fat and separating the usable fat from the other material. The resulting tallow can then be used for a variety of purposes, including cooking, candle making and soapmaking.

Tallow has a long history in traditional soapmaking, long before modern skincare became dominated by hundreds of different ingredients.

Importantly for us, tallow is an ingredient that might otherwise be discarded but we can carefully process it and turn it into something useful and beautiful.

Where does our tallow come from?

Our tallow comes from Cornish farms.

We work directly with farmers and have built strong relationships with them over time. We collect the raw fat from the farms and bring it back to our own workspace, where we render it ourselves.

This local connection is really important to us.

Rather than simply ordering an anonymous ingredient from a large supplier, we know the people we're working with and where our raw material comes from.

It also means we can be much more involved in what happens to the tallow before we use it in our soap.

Why do we render the tallow ourselves?

This is one of the things we're particularly proud of.

We don't buy ready-rendered tallow and simply add it to our recipe.

We start with the raw fat and do the rendering ourselves.

That gives us control over the process and allows us to pay close attention to the quality and consistency of the tallow we produce.

For a small business like ours, that matters.

We want to know what we're putting into our soap, and we want our batches to be as consistent as possible.

It also means we're not several steps removed from the raw material. We know where it came from, who supplied it and how it was processed. It's also a lot cheaper to buy raw than ready rendered so we can produce tallow skincare that's affordable for every pocket. Unfortunately some tallow product pricing is making it a very niche and luxury product - tallow skincare should be available for everyone.

Why use tallow in soap?

Tallow has been used in soapmaking for generations because its fatty acid composition makes it well suited to producing a solid bar of soap.

When combined with water (spring water from our farm), in a soap formulation, with the correct amount of lye (an alkali), the fats are converted through a process called saponification.

The result is soap.

Why grass-fed tallow?

We specifically seek out grass-fed tallow from the farms we work with. The cattle we source from are raised on Cornish farms where grass is an important part of their diet. For us, choosing grass-fed tallow is about sourcing a raw material that fits with the farming practices and values we want Hog & Tallow to represent.

We're a small Cornish business and whenever possible we like knowing where our ingredients come from and building relationships with the people who produce them.

Working with local farmers also allows us to make use of a material that is a natural by-product of farming.

Instead of treating the fat as waste, we can collect it, render it and give it another purpose.

Why make tallow soap locally?

For us, it's about more than simply having “tallow soap” written on the label.

It's about knowing our raw material and the people behind it.

That extra involvement takes more time and work, but it gives us something we value highly: control.

Control over the raw material.

Control over the rendering process.

And control over the consistency of the tallow we put into our soap.

That's important when you're making products yourself rather than simply buying finished ingredients and putting them together.

Explore our 100% tallow soap range

We make a range of 100% tallow soap bars - just tallow, spring water as the base. We have unscented, sweet orange & clove, lavender and charcoal. Only ever pure essential oils used to scent. so there's something to suit different preferences.

You can explore our 100% tallow soap range and find out more about each individual bar, including its ingredients and scent.

Why we make tallow soap

At Hog & Tallow, we believe good products start with good ingredients and knowing where those ingredients come from.

For us, that means working closely with Cornish farmers, collecting raw fat, rendering it ourselves and turning it into something useful.

It's a slower, more hands-on approach, but that's exactly what we like about it.

From Cornish farm to rendered tallow to finished soap bar.